What's the TTRPG character that you've enjoyed playing the most?

[Kae]

So I'm pretty bored so I figured I'd ask you which of all the characters you've played you've enjoyed playing the most, of course if you want to say more than one that's fine.

Spoiler: Spoilered for length

I could bother explaining the ridiculously complex backstory that the character had but I'll spare you the details, in any case my favourite character that I ever played was a Void Shugenja (Like a Priestess of weird Magic) in the game Legend of the 5 Rings 4E, but anyway what made her so fun is that she was a pacifist and a very naive Phiosopher, in addition to that she was also extremely gullible, of course to counteract that she had absurdly high Intelligence & Void stats as well as being an excellent Medic & having absurdly powerful buff spells.
In any case the reason why I found her so fun to play it's partly because it was very refreshing to play character that wasn't a cynic like I am, & I found the exercise of thinking up solutions that didn't involve violence & having the certainty that they would turn out all right quite fun really, but for the most part it was my group's interpretation of the setting of Rokugan as it's basically an extremely rigid fascist & xenophobic society in which there's no room for stepping outside your social station, also they played the Samurai as very stoic & very compliant with those things, so since I was a goody two shoes that was more about morality than upholding the letter of the law, it was basically the whole world except for 1 party member against me, my character was also not great at public speaking so I had to find other ways to convince people but since she was so easy to influence too that lead to a lot of conflict & basically to a character arc in which everything she ever did failed, not because it was wrong but because she couldn't play the game of intrigue as it just wasn't in her nature (Seriously I don't think I had a single victory in that campaign).

My favourite part in the campaign was when we captured some European Priests that seemed to have a religion similar to Catholicism & I managed to convince the party to spare their life , I had a lot of conversations about religion & Philosophy with the priest to the point in which I ended up Reading their holy text & he ended up reading ours, it was a huge arc that was building to both the Priest & I to become advocates of peace for our respective countries since we had earned each others respect mainly because I always treated him with dignity & defended him even when it caused soldiers to beat me up because they thought the Gaijin used evil Dark Magic, which I found out wasn't true because I knew about Dark Magic & whatever the Priest was doing was a completely different thing but it definitely had a good aura, the only bad part about that arc is that the other players really didn't want to defy Samurai culture & ended up killing the priest afterwe were ambushed by a different group of Gaijin and I was stripped of my status & ranking for heresy (My character did a lot of research into Gaijin magic & religion & found proof that they were truthful, part of her arc is that she was promoting a new belief that both her Religion & the Gaijin's were true, which meant that the creation myths of both religions were wrong as they were entirely incompatible, so yeah she was definitely guilty of Heresy.), and a bit later brutally killed by some Ninjas because I stumbled into their secret that they used black magic.

But anyway for the 2 months that arc lasted it was the most fun I ever had in a role-playing game, it's a shame most people want to play more pragmatic & morally ambiguous characters because I was seriously surprised by how fun it was to play an extremely good character especially in a setting that doesn't support their ideals.

 

[SupahEwok]

For me? Grak, the psychic psychotic kobold.

Spoiler: The Chronicle of Grak, Vol 1, Pt 1

He wasn't meant to be evil. His origins lay in me wanting to tease a fellow player, who at the time liked to make YA protagonist type characters. He had a Dragonborn Paladin in this game. So I decided to make a kobold. I believe it was lore at the time, or perhaps from an older edition (this was back in 4e, which I only played cuz it was the only edition my friends knew), that kobolds worshipped dragons, so this little guy's whole schtick was that he was slightly nutty, and upon seeing my friend's character, would take that character as the avatar of his god, and Grak would be his herald. The psychic was cuz a 2e psionic had been my favorite character from a gameplay perspective, and I wanted to give it a try in 4e. I specialized in psychic fire powers.

Cue some slapstick comedy bits around the otherwise mildly serious campaign... until the end of the first arc. There was a bad guy with some machine that would suck out the life of all the machine-people in the local area to revive some dead chick in a crystal. I don't remember the details. I simply decided that while everybody else was fighting the villain, I'd go over and start flipping switches and levers at random.

Now, this seems like a "lulz so random" move, but I did have a reason. My real life experience had taught me that, unlike in videogames, there is nothing in industrial machinery preventing you from fucking it up if you flip levers in the wrong order (that itself is a story, but I think anybody who's worked with machinery would agree with me). Unfortunately, I didn't communicate that that was what I was going for, and none of my friends had any experience with machinery at all, so... the DM said I basically activated the machine and genocided the local populace.

Instead of arguing it, I just decided to roll with it. I was playing an insane evil gremlin, playing the herald to a holier than thou paladin.

Next tavern we came to? Burned it down. I don't remember why. I think it was an accident, or as accidental as insane kobolds can be, anyway. Questioned by the party, I succeeded in deception checks to lie about it (although naturally everybody knew out of character, and the paladin and his IRL (at the time) girlfriend were doing everything they could to catch me).

Next we come to a city. The tavern we stop at is run by the brother of the guy who owned the tavern that burned down. It's another excuse to grill me. I manage to pass off the blame to new immigrants (look, this was before the Syrian crisis and The Wall, okay?). The DM exposits to us that in the months to come, a pogrom is initiated to genocide the ethnic group that were my erstwhile patsies.

While in the city, I go along to preach the word of my god, with a collection plate (which was the burnt out skull of one of those machine people from the first genocide, and which I'd declared a holy relic). I managed to collect 21 silver pieces in donations. As I was walking back to the inn, a street urchin snatched the skull with the money in it. Grak chased him down, through the sewers, until we're under an orphanage, amid a gathering of urchins, all willing to fight my diminutive creep for the pocket change. So I change tack: I say the money doesn't matter, the skull is a holy relic of my "church", can I please have it back and you can keep the money. The orphans converse, agree, and hand over the skull.

Grak took a few steps away, before stopping for a moment's consideration. Then I lit the orphans on fire.

This is without doubt the worst thing I've ever done in a roleplaying game, but hey, a psychotic pyromaniac is gonna set brats on fire.

The DM says the fire hits some sewer gas, and the fire travels up into the orphanage, and ends up burning down that entire quarter of the city. As an afterthought, I tried to use telekinesis to grab the silver pieces. I rolled a critical failure, and the DM says they flew up into the air and scattered across the world, Dragonball style (I hope that conveys that he and I were not taking this situation remotely seriously). That gave birth to the next legend I preached of: the Quest for the Dragon's Silver Scales. To gather all 21 is to have your wish granted. But I never mention that said wish is to have 21 silver pieces.

As the party sees the city burning, Grak is questioned again. I successfully lie, again.

 

[SupahEwok]

Spoiler: The Chronicle of Grak, Vol 1, Pt 2

From there, there's not as much fine detail. I was working as a lifeguard for the summer, and since I was reliable I got called in a lot for substitutions at the last minute, so lots of time I was late for games and didn't have as much playtime. Some incidents:

• Grak managed to cook a waffle on his own skull.
• Grak managed to go off and create a knightly order for his church and led them back to the party, only for them to immediately abandon him.
• Grak tried to choke a Roc with its own egg.
• There was a My Little Pony session. MLP was in its heyday, my friends were bronies. Don't worry, they got better. I don't remember the details of the session; we were teleported to Equestria and there were a lot of references that flew over my head.

We get to the last dungeon, and I'm late again, so when I get there I'm told my character was captured offscreen and is in a prison cell within the dungeon of some cult we're fighting. By now, I've worked up a backstory which the DM knows: Grak is actually from the future. He received a vision and psychic powers from his god, Fluffle'mingle'les, who told Grak that Grak had to travel back to the past in order to steal the Macguffin that this campaign is about and use it to ascend to become Fluffle'mingle'les. Grak is on board with this. Fluffle'mingle'les tells him enough to let him hook his caboose to this particular adventuring group, and Grak expended most of his psychic power time traveling to them to join them.

Couple more things for the set-up: the DM established at some point that a critical hit on some mind power I had would cause a stun effect. It also got established that I could set up this mind power to activate ahead of time. Our DM was also letting us "buy" natural 20's from him; it was heavily implied that buying a 20 was selling our characters' souls in a Faustian bargain (all of these were outside the rules as written, but our DM was playing fast and loose with those, clearly). Before we entered this final dungeon, I set up the mind power in each of my party members with bought natural 20's, via texting the DM, thereby keeping it out of player knowledge.

So, in the jail, another of our party was captured, for some reason. This guy was playing an MLP pony, using some homebrew rules for unicorn PC's. He was looking for a way back to Equestria and seemed the most amoral in the party aside from Grak, so I pulled the player aside and told him the backstory, and asked for his help, and in return, I would use my god powers to return him to his home dimension. The player signed on. So now I had a coup going.

We were eventually found and freed. I don't remember the dungeon at all, so fast forward to the final confrontation. There's a side room, that has some massive monster thing chained up to the wall. Everybody else backed the fuck out of the room. But Grak walked right up to the monster, and said "Hello!"

The monster looked down.

I asked myself, WWGD (What Would Grak Do?). Now, I had to be honest with myself. So Grak lit the giant monster with whom he was alone's head on fire. It didn't seem hurt the monster. Everybody at the table went "Oh shit".

The DM asked if Grak had anything to say. So I said "that is the greeting of my people". The DM rolled to see how the monster reacted to this. The monster reached down to Grak... whereupon Grak's head glowed with a fiery halo. "Grak has made a friend!" squealed that little scaly rat. Cue the party getting into the final boss battle, it going south, and then the monster crashing through the wall with Grak on his shoulder.

We wipe out the boss, and get the MacGuffin. Everybody is rejoicing, but I catch the DM's eye and say "Now." Cue: everybody but the pony and monster is hit with a mind blast that stuns them. Grak swipes the MacGuffin, and tries to channel the energy into himself. DM says flat out that it doesn't work: the MacGuffin is just a key to the celestial realms (I think the goal of the campaign was to go up to the heavens to ask the gods to flip the switch to the sun back on, cuz it went out; I'd never paid much attention to the plot). And for trying to mess with it, the god of Rock and Roll Hell (who I always imagined as Gene Simmons) reached up and grabbed Grak, dragging him down to the fires below.

Well, the party comes out of it, goes up to the heavens (the pony following at a discreet distance as nobody addresses whose side he'd taken in that whole fracas), and upon entry, the monster starts dancing away into the holy light and becomes a celestial bunny. And thus is the true Fluffle'mingle'les born.

I guess they got the sun turned on or something, I dunno. But the gods tried to send them back home after telling the party "good job", but somebody didn't quite get the calibration right and everybody is scattered across the cosmos, and the DM narrated where each character ended up. For Grak's part, he caused so much ruckus in Rock and Roll Hell that he was expelled and ended up in a city of lepers, becoming their irate king, mainly through the virtue of being able to set anybody he wanted on fire.

Thus are the Chronicles of Grak. He was the most fun character I've ever played, and the one who, through a mere 6-7 sessions, managed to generate the most stories. That was 7 years ago. I'm currently running a 5e game for that same group, including the old DM as a player, and that DM recently said that he's come up with a few game ideas for Grak to star in that he can run, should I ever desire a break. So perhaps there will be a Volume 2 someday soon.

 

[the December King]

My current favourite, at least in the short term, has been a gnoll cleric, SkaarSkyl. He was sentenced to be ritually hunted and slain by his tribe for being a male Priest of Malar, a no-no among the foul Hyena folk of Faerun (the females are the spiritual leaders of the tribe). Even Malar himself removed his divine powers from ScarrSkyl as he fled into the frozen wastes above Anauroch, leaving him defenseless in a blizzard and harried by the tribes laughing hunters. There, he called favour from any entity that would listen to his plea, and from the frozen void above, something responded. Days later, the storm seemed to suddenly abate, and when the hunters caught up to him, ScarrSkyl was wreathed in frost and possessed the power of the storm itself, which had been placed within his soul. He scattered the hunters pieces across the crags of the frozen wastes with this power, and then wandered into the blinding sunlight reflected upon the ice, and was transported to a lost realm far away, there to begin his adventures (so far, he's been able come down from the unfamiliar mountains he found himself in, and to introduce himself to some traveling, non-gnoll adventurers without getting killed, and helped them in a support role as they fought some frost giants).



But my favourite character is really one of my original tabletop characters.The character is a 35 year old concept, and has evolved through D&D, AD&D, 2nd.ed AD&D, 3rd.ed AD&D, 3.5, and is mid evolution through Pathfinder (it would be a great loss of power to take it any farther as it currently stands). In game, It has had many names to denote it's comings and goings, most of which have been wiped from the memories of the peoples and cultures who used them. The latest name has simply been 'The Serpent Sage' (when I was younger and the character didn't have as much power, it's name was "Hisser"); an epic wizard of a long lost pre-human reptilian race (heavily influenced by Robert Howard, obviously, but when you're a kid, you can't deny those influences you've had).

 

[SckizoBoy]

So I'm pretty bored so I figured I'd ask you which of all the characters you've played you've enjoyed playing the most, of course if you want to say more than one that's fine.

On clicking into this thread, upon seeing your username, all I could think of was my IKRPG snarky Mage Hunter (Kae is the community nickname for Kaelyssa, Night's Whisper, a warcaster in the main tabletop skirmish-battle wargame and she is one of my favourite warcasters in that game, and yes, she's a snarky Mage Hunter, though my character can't wield magic or command a battlegroup, however, but that's beside the point).

However, the most hijinks I got in an RPG was my mad scientist Tzimisce in Vampire: the Masquerade. It was hilarious because I wasn't really aware, like, at all, of the setting when I got it into my head how I was going to play the game, so in our very first encounter, I went and broke the Masquerade (running in all 'I'm a vam-PYRE, nothing can stop me, mwahahahahaha!' etc.)! The others were like, holy crap, let's skedaddle, but I stayed and started to rough chirurgeoning on the poor bastard we ran into well past the point when cops appeared and I got bailed out (amidst much handwaving) and as a consequence, my initial starting 'base' was a quarry in the middle of nowhere and I was blood-starved for a bit longer than was comfortable. I took that as an excuse to go 'in for a penny, in for a pound' as far as my character's insanity was concerned, but conceded to the party/GM to pay attention to the Masquerade. The rest of the campaign consisted of the party planning shit and trying to figure out a way of preventing me from screwing it up though I was 'trying' to cooperate (albeit in the monkey's paw fashion).

 

[Kae]

On clicking into this thread, upon seeing your username, all I could think of was my IKRPG snarky Mage Hunter (Kae is the community nickname for Kaelyssa, Night's Whisper, a warcaster in the main tabletop skirmish-battle wargame and she is one of my favourite warcasters in that game, and yes, she's a snarky Mage Hunter, though my character can't wield magic or command a battlegroup, however, but that's beside the point).

Well I like sharing a name with such a character, after all it does sound like something I would play.

However, the most hijinks I got in an RPG was my mad scientist Tzimisce in Vampire: the Masquerade. It was hilarious because I wasn't really aware, like, at all, of the setting when I got it into my head how I was going to play the game, so in our very first encounter, I went and broke the Masquerade (running in all 'I'm a vam-PYRE, nothing can stop me, mwahahahahaha!' etc.)! The others were like, holy crap, let's skedaddle, but I stayed and started to rough chirurgeoning on the poor bastard we ran into well past the point when cops appeared and I got bailed out (amidst much handwaving) and as a consequence, my initial starting 'base' was a quarry in the middle of nowhere and I was blood-starved for a bit longer than was comfortable. I took that as an excuse to go 'in for a penny, in for a pound' as far as my character's insanity was concerned, but conceded to the party/GM to pay attention to the Masquerade. The rest of the campaign consisted of the party planning shit and trying to figure out a way of preventing me from screwing it up though I was 'trying' to cooperate (albeit in the monkey's paw fashion).

Mad scientist with Vampire's Kiss references?
I approve, mad scientists are great but they have such a high likelihood of derailing campaigns that I tend to avoid them, but yeah that sounds fun.

 

[happyninja42]

I forget his name, and I forget if it was Arcana Unearthed, or Unearthed Arcana, but I basically made a DnD version of Khimari from FF 10. The game had a race of cat people, and I picked that to start. For his class, I gave him what is basically an Animal Warrior, sort of a ranger/druid type, I think they were called Totem Warriors? They spirit bond to a particular animal, and you gain one of that animal as a companion, and you both gain traits off each other. The humanoid begins to get the abilities of their totem animal, and the animal becomes much stronger.

Well, this was back before Pathfinder existed, in the early years of the D20 system 3rd edition. And I had noticed that the almost never used mechanic of "if someone moves through a threatened space, you get an attack of opportunity" had a really fun way to take advantage of it.

I picked my weapon as polearm, which actually had reach, so that I could actually take advantage of someone coming into a space I threatened, and then move out of it, while still being in melee range. I built him with max dexterity, and took the feat that allowed you to do as many attacks of opportunity per round, as your dex modifier. He had a +4 Dex mod. I also built him with a series of feats that allowed him bonus to hit on prone targets, and his weapon gave him a free trip attack if he made a touch attack.

So basically, I built him to sweep the leg of incoming enemies, when they hit the ground, he'd get a free swipe at them, 'cause I think it triggered the AoO mechanic, and he was super likely to hit them. It was mostly an experiment to see if you could actually build a PC around the AoO mechanics and reach. And it worked....oh how it worked.

The shining moment was we were in the woods, making our way to the quest objective, and my guy was on night watch when we had an encounter. He rolled well on his spot check, and noticed a group of bandits charging our camp. I positioned him between the camp and the bandits, and as they came in, he went to town.

He basically beat the entire encounter in a single action round, or close to it. None of them survived the attacks, and since they were all melee, they were forced to charge him. It felt SOOO good to have it work out like that.

That's one of my favorite PC's to ever play in gaming.

I played a few mages and werewolves in the World of Darkness system back in the day, on various forum sites with live chat mechanics, and they were very personal characters that I enjoyed. But they were more memorable for their concepts than their mechanics.

Like my Obrimos Silver Ladder mage who went by the name Frequency. His Awakening was centered around finding that the Truth of Reality, was that all of reality and matter, were simply vibrations of energy, and if you knew the right frequency, you could manifest anything in reality. Basically the Weirding Way from David Lynch's Dune film. I loved him to death, he had so many fun events that he took part in.

Or my Storm Lord Theurge (I forget what his werewolf name was), who was all about rituals and gifts, and making himself the werewolf equivalent of Batman basically. Always having something in his pouch to handle any spiritual threat they encountered. I took great pride in how often I would log in to take part in one of the major events of the campaign, and have people PM me about how they were glad I was there, as I always made things go much easier with my bag of tricks and way of tackling problems.

 

[Saint of M]

Bilbo, Half Orc Paladin of Godzilla. Just realized he was adopted...by gnomes

 

[Chimpzy]

Richmond
One of my first D&D characters, Richmond was a regular ol' Human Wizard who specializes in Transmutation who wore a mask shaped like a fox that he never takes off. His biggest thing was that he's crazy. Basically, if you know the Pyro from TF2, like that. All Pyrovision looneyness, all the time, tho not as inherently violent and fire-obsessed. His backstory was that he was a failed experiment to create the ultimate insane wizard from parts of lesser insane wizards, created in a super secret underwater volcano laboratory ... in space! Or at least, that's what he kept telling people, tho the story changes every time he told it. He also had an irrational hatred of Italians and would try to kill them on sight. When asked what Italians are, he'd never give a proper answer. I left his backstory vague and nonsensical on purpose to make it easy on the DM (he liked weaving backgrounds into the storyline) so he could take it any place he wanted.

Though often psychopathic, Richmond was actually the most selfless and genuinely friendly member of his party, being the closest to actually good (the rest were evil characters pretending to be heroes, basically villains with good PR), often helping people simply because he thought it would be funny and eschewing rewards for some useless piece of junk. Thing was that despite his intelligence and wanting to be a good guy, he had no real understanding of what "good" is, so his solutions to whatever problems a quest posed usually worked, but tended to cause different issues that were almost as bad, and sometimes even more horrifying in certain ways. It made him really fun to play though, since I could come up with the most batshit plans. It wasn't a very serious campaign, so more often than not our DM ruled it could work (Richmond had levels in the Fatespinner PrC, so he justified it by me subconsciously altering fate so the impossible was only the improbable.)

Later on he turned himself into a Lich so he could continue the fun time forever, eventually becoming our homebrew setting's equivalent of Elminster when we had started a new campaign taking place after a 15 year time jump where all the old PC's are living legend epic characters. He's actually dead for real in our current sessions, which are more short unconnected adventures than a real campaign, with the current one dealing with the fallout from one of his many unfinished ventures that he half-assed before getting distracted or bored, and deciding his time was better spent on perfecting a new recipe for lemon cakes.

Got another one I really liked, but I'll keep it for later.

 

[09philj]

Pietro Giovanni. A thoroughly nasty little bastard I play as in Vampire: The Masquerade. He started as a regular Giovanni capo. Now he's... something else.

Spoiler: Notable feats achieved by Pietro

• Getting killed by his family but coming back.
• Taking a lance to the chest yet sustaining no damage.
• Using some hand gestures so unclear that they led to the murder of two unfortunate delivery drivers.
• Destroying something like three perfectly good suits through rough use.
• Using his evil ghost mentor to kill his evil(er) self from an alternate timeline and then stealing his evil ghost mentor.
• Getting killed again and getting sent to hell for a long while.
• Abandoning human morality and deciding death is actually great.
• Defeating an enemy by using domination powers to make him juggle his sword, which he failed to do. Also he was naked at the time.
• Getting infected with vicissitude.
• Solving the vicissitude problem by diablerising the Tzimisce Antediluvian and becoming one of the most powerful vampires on Earth.
• Despite being shot, stabbed, chewed on, blown up, and otherwise generally maimed, Pietro is one of two characters from the initial four in our party who's survived all the way to the current session.

 

[SckizoBoy]

Well I like sharing a name with such a character, after all it does sound like something I would play.

I just realised that you wouldn't be able to make the connection between 'warcaster' and 'can wield magic/command a battlegroup' from my original comment. Kaelyssa is the first, so she can do the second, my RPG character isn't, so can't(!) If that makes sense.

Guess the material point was that they're both snarky elves who kill human magic users with panache, so it doesn't really matter, I suppose!

Mad scientist with Vampire's Kiss references?
I approve, mad scientists are great but they have such a high likelihood of derailing campaigns that I tend to avoid them, but yeah that sounds fun.

I was pretty open and playful about it, and it was more like a kid in a candy shop/bull in a china shop sort of a thing where I'd go "test subjects?!" or something like that and there'd be a bit of a lighthearted argument. I made sure I only 'played up' in inconsequential encounters or in ways that we were always able to recover from. DM's screen was useful as he generally drily remarked about my 'unprecedented bad luck'.

 

[Kae]

Bilbo, Half Orc Paladin of Godzilla. Just realized he was adopted...by gnomes

I've actually never played a meme character, I've played alongside them but I've only ever tried it once & the DM wasn't on board and said no, which is a shame because I was super exited to play her, but oh well, I probably should give it a whirl, though if I'm honest even the Meme character that I didn't get to play is a character that I spent a whole month writing making sure she made sense inside the lore of the game despite her wackiness, but that's just the way I make characters.

I forget his name, and I forget if it was Arcana Unearthed, or Unearthed Arcana, but I basically made a DnD version of Khimari from FF 10. The game had a race of cat people, and I picked that to start. For his class, I gave him what is basically an Animal Warrior, sort of a ranger/druid type, I think they were called Totem Warriors? They spirit bond to a particular animal, and you gain one of that animal as a companion, and you both gain traits off each other. The humanoid begins to get the abilities of their totem animal, and the animal becomes much stronger.

Well, this was back before Pathfinder existed, in the early years of the D20 system 3rd edition. And I had noticed that the almost never used mechanic of "if someone moves through a threatened space, you get an attack of opportunity" had a really fun way to take advantage of it.

I picked my weapon as polearm, which actually had reach, so that I could actually take advantage of someone coming into a space I threatened, and then move out of it, while still being in melee range. I built him with max dexterity, and took the feat that allowed you to do as many attacks of opportunity per round, as your dex modifier. He had a +4 Dex mod. I also built him with a series of feats that allowed him bonus to hit on prone targets, and his weapon gave him a free trip attack if he made a touch attack.

So basically, I built him to sweep the leg of incoming enemies, when they hit the ground, he'd get a free swipe at them, 'cause I think it triggered the AoO mechanic, and he was super likely to hit them. It was mostly an experiment to see if you could actually build a PC around the AoO mechanics and reach. And it worked....oh how it worked.

The shining moment was we were in the woods, making our way to the quest objective, and my guy was on night watch when we had an encounter. He rolled well on his spot check, and noticed a group of bandits charging our camp. I positioned him between the camp and the bandits, and as they came in, he went to town.

He basically beat the entire encounter in a single action round, or close to it. None of them survived the attacks, and since they were all melee, they were forced to charge him. It felt SOOO good to have it work out like that.

That's one of my favorite PC's to ever play in gaming.

I played a few mages and werewolves in the World of Darkness system back in the day, on various forum sites with live chat mechanics, and they were very personal characters that I enjoyed. But they were more memorable for their concepts than their mechanics.

Like my Obrimos Silver Ladder mage who went by the name Frequency. His Awakening was centered around finding that the Truth of Reality, was that all of reality and matter, were simply vibrations of energy, and if you knew the right frequency, you could manifest anything in reality. Basically the Weirding Way from David Lynch's Dune film. I loved him to death, he had so many fun events that he took part in.

Or my Storm Lord Theurge (I forget what his werewolf name was), who was all about rituals and gifts, and making himself the werewolf equivalent of Batman basically. Always having something in his pouch to handle any spiritual threat they encountered. I took great pride in how often I would log in to take part in one of the major events of the campaign, and have people PM me about how they were glad I was there, as I always made things go much easier with my bag of tricks and way of tackling problems.

You know I actually find it interesting that you would choose a character as one of your favourites because of the mechanics of the game, as I don't think I've ever even bothered thinking about the actual mechanical build when I think back on my favourite characters, it's not like I don't put in effort into giving my characters viable builds it's more that I don't remember the combat in mechanical terms after-the fact, but I think it's really cool that you can enjoy the combat to that degree.

I just realised that you wouldn't be able to make the connection between 'warcaster' and 'can wield magic/command a battlegroup' from my original comment. Kaelyssa is the first, so she can do the second, my RPG character isn't, so can't(!) If that makes sense.

Guess the material point was that they're both snarky elves who kill human magic users with panache, so it doesn't really matter, I suppose!

I had actually failed to make that connection but now that you mention it I do get it, even though I don't play war games I do know a lot of people that do and they've taught me how to play War Machine and other games they like but I never follow them into it because it's more expensive than Tabletop RPGs, also if I'm honest I'm not fond of the local War Gaming community, too much drama.

I was pretty open and playful about it, and it was more like a kid in a candy shop/bull in a china shop sort of a thing where I'd go "test subjects?!" or something like that and there'd be a bit of a lighthearted argument. I made sure I only 'played up' in inconsequential encounters or in ways that we were always able to recover from. DM's screen was useful as he generally drily remarked about my 'unprecedented bad luck'.

Oh, that's a good way to handle it, personally I've never played one as a character, only as NPCs when running my own game and I do love acting so over-the-top Saturday morning cartoon evil, I think that's really fun, perhaps I too should give it a whirl as an actual character rather than the villain of the week that doesn't get to return because players kill everything.

 

[SckizoBoy]

I had actually failed to make that connection but now that you mention it I do get it, even though I don't play war games I do know a lot of people that do and they've taught me how to play War Machine and other games they like but I never follow them into it because it's more expensive than Tabletop RPGs, also if I'm honest I'm not fond of the local War Gaming community, too much drama.

Ah cool, so you do have experience of the system. But yeah, totally understandable that you'd be turned off by the barrier of entry. It is indeed an expensive hobby and you can't really have another spending outlet for disposable income if you're invested in a skirmish wargame. I enjoy it tho and like talking about it (plus story/tactics and stuff like that) with others, so I get what I want from it.

Oh, that's a good way to handle it, personally I've never played one as a character, only as NPCs when running my own game and I do love acting so over-the-top Saturday morning cartoon evil, I think that's really fun, perhaps I too should give it a whirl as an actual character rather than the villain of the week that doesn't get to return because players kill everything.

Yeah, I'm not a naturally hammy individual, so I played it in a tongue-firmly-in-cheek creepy way, sort of like Arkham trilogy Joker-lite.

 

[happyninja42]

You know I actually find it interesting that you would choose a character as one of your favourites because of the mechanics of the game, as I don't think I've ever even bothered thinking about the actual mechanical build when I think back on my favourite characters, it's not like I don't put in effort into giving my characters viable builds it's more that I don't remember the combat in mechanical terms after-the fact, but I think it's really cool that you can enjoy the combat to that degree.

Well the thread is "characters you enjoyed playing the most", I enjoyed playing him a lot. It was mostly due to finding a way to actually make a particular combat rule that seemed entirely pointless and useless, become relevant. Short version, there was a really simple and easy way to work around the attack of opporunity rule when moving through threatened space. So easy in fact, our entire table thought the rule itself was a pointless joke. And then we actually fought a large size enemy with reach, and it became quite the issue to deal with. So I wanted to see if a human sized character could capitalize on the rule. It was mostly just a fun thought experiment for me, as I'm normally not a rules/mechanics gamer. But that was one of the few exceptions where I enjoyed actually playing to the mechanics. The campaign was short lived, as we were just going through a module that we never finished, and the GM rotated to another person (we had a round robin style of GMing back then). But it was just fun to actually say "hmm, I wonder if the rules allow for someone to actually make this Dex modifier, Attack of Opportunity concept, into a viable threat? Oh look! You can!" Because without reach, you really don't get enough situations that would allow you to do more than one Attack of Opportunity anyway, it's just a really niche rule that is hard to actually trigger, with a normal, given character.

Plus I just REALLY loved Khimari from FF10, and I really wanted to make a Feline Man, Polearm wielding badass who could cleave through foes like my Khimari did. And that alignment of rules is how I pulled it off. His name was Mah'Keer by the way, I remembered it last night after going to bed. Also thematically it went well with his concept, as the wolves in that setting had a natural feature to their attacks, where if they landed an attack, they got a free trip attempt. And my guy, with his feats, had the opposite, if he landed a trip attempt, he got a free attack. So it also felt fitting, given he was supposed to be imbued with the spiritual powers of wolves, and mechanically it made sense. I didn't notice that until after the initial concept was thought up though, when I started reading over my companion's stats to see what his strengths would be.

But aside from that character, I really don't give a shit about mechanics and gear and stuff. Especially if it's a D20 variant system. I HATE that system so much. It's just so min/maxing/combat focused that I get super bored. I hate the constant gear upgrading, power upgrading, all of it. It just bores me to death. So I haven't played a D20 system in....shit...probably 15+ years? Well no, I take that back, me and a few friends from that same group played a Starfinder module about a year or so ago, as well as a free module where you play as some good aligned goblins in the Pathfinder setting (which was super fun). But other than little one shots, I've avoided the system like the plague. I prefer other systems like the WoD system, that aren't so reliant on constant loot hunting and gear progression. Where most of the advancement is internal power growth, and whatever gear you have you'll probably keep forever, because they are powerful magical/spiritual totems that aren't suddenly made obsolete because you found a new weapon with an additional +1 to it's stat.

 

[Kae]

Ah cool, so you do have experience of the system. But yeah, totally understandable that you'd be turned off by the barrier of entry. It is indeed an expensive hobby and you can't really have another spending outlet for disposable income if you're invested in a skirmish wargame. I enjoy it tho and like talking about it (plus story/tactics and stuff like that) with others, so I get what I want from it.

Don't get me wrong I do understand the appeal & from what little I played I think it's really fun, but I'm not the kind of player that develops the loyalty to an army or playstyle required in order to get into the collecting part, as I'm quite flaky & tend to always want to try something new, so my attitude doesn't mesh very well with the collecting part of those kinds of games, if the barrier to entry were much lower & trying new armies required a much lower investment I think I could get into it, but the business model tends to be very much aimed into picking your favourite faction & specialising in most war games.

Yeah, I'm not a naturally hammy individual, so I played it in a tongue-firmly-in-cheek creepy way, sort of like Arkham trilogy Joker-lite.

That's cool Mark Hamil's Joker is pretty fun & not as hammy as other villains, but I do get the appeal though, & I do understand your aversion to hamminess, there are things I can't do, mostly things like playing a brute or a really smooth character come to mind, I'm pretty bad at those things in general, seduction in particular stands out because I tend to play a lot of intrigue type characters, but I'm just awful at it, I'm good at negotiations & court stuff but seduction is just something I can't do.
As an upside I'm like the one player that plays Bards & doesn't seduce the dragon, or anyone really.

Well the thread is "characters you enjoyed playing the most", I enjoyed playing him a lot. It was mostly due to finding a way to actually make a particular combat rule that seemed entirely pointless and useless, become relevant. Short version, there was a really simple and easy way to work around the attack of opporunity rule when moving through threatened space. So easy in fact, our entire table thought the rule itself was a pointless joke. And then we actually fought a large size enemy with reach, and it became quite the issue to deal with. So I wanted to see if a human sized character could capitalize on the rule. It was mostly just a fun thought experiment for me, as I'm normally not a rules/mechanics gamer. But that was one of the few exceptions where I enjoyed actually playing to the mechanics. The campaign was short lived, as we were just going through a module that we never finished, and the GM rotated to another person (we had a round robin style of GMing back then). But it was just fun to actually say "hmm, I wonder if the rules allow for someone to actually make this Dex modifier, Attack of Opportunity concept, into a viable threat? Oh look! You can!" Because without reach, you really don't get enough situations that would allow you to do more than one Attack of Opportunity anyway, it's just a really niche rule that is hard to actually trigger, with a normal, given character.

Plus I just REALLY loved Khimari from FF10, and I really wanted to make a Feline Man, Polearm wielding badass who could cleave through foes like my Khimari did. And that alignment of rules is how I pulled it off. His name was Mah'Keer by the way, I remembered it last night after going to bed. Also thematically it went well with his concept, as the wolves in that setting had a natural feature to their attacks, where if they landed an attack, they got a free trip attempt. And my guy, with his feats, had the opposite, if he landed a trip attempt, he got a free attack. So it also felt fitting, given he was supposed to be imbued with the spiritual powers of wolves, and mechanically it made sense. I didn't notice that until after the initial concept was thought up though, when I started reading over my companion's stats to see what his strengths would be.

But aside from that character, I really don't give a shit about mechanics and gear and stuff. Especially if it's a D20 variant system. I HATE that system so much. It's just so min/maxing/combat focused that I get super bored. I hate the constant gear upgrading, power upgrading, all of it. It just bores me to death. So I haven't played a D20 system in....shit...probably 15+ years? Well no, I take that back, me and a few friends from that same group played a Starfinder module about a year or so ago, as well as a free module where you play as some good aligned goblins in the Pathfinder setting (which was super fun). But other than little one shots, I've avoided the system like the plague. I prefer other systems like the WoD system, that aren't so reliant on constant loot hunting and gear progression. Where most of the advancement is internal power growth, and whatever gear you have you'll probably keep forever, because they are powerful magical/spiritual totems that aren't suddenly made obsolete because you found a new weapon with an additional +1 to it's stat.

I see, you know Roleplaying is also playing, but we actually don't have all that different opinions on stuff like the D20 system, & I kinda really don't like Magic Items in D&D, it's probably why I enjoyed L5R4E more than D&D since Magic Items are so rare in that system that I think by the end of the campaign we only had 2 as in the whole party only had 2 (5 players BTW), maybe 3 I don't remember but I think it was that & the fact that it focused more on skills & RP than combat, with a lot of classes that don't even have combat skills, but yeah I get what you're saying.

 

[happyninja42]

I see, you know Roleplaying is also playing,

Um...yes? I...yes I am aware that there is playing in roleplaying? I'm....I'm not really sure what you are trying to express with that statement?

As to you comments about gear in systems, yeah I consider myself fairly "crunch allergic". I just really don't enjoy bothering with the mechanics of the stuff, especially when it's mostly just adding bigger numbers to things, to make more challenge. I mean I make a character, who has a staff, and it's instrumental to their backstory. There is an entire lore about the staff, and it's personal meaning to them. But....I have to never use it again past like level 3 maybe, because it's numbers just aren't big enough to match the threats I am facing.

But if this was a book or film, that staff would be a key item for the protagonist.

Which is one reason I enjoyed the World of Darkness system so much. For one, gear just doesn't increase much. A pistol is a pistol, and it's just as powerful now as when you first started the game. But it's also that they don't really focus on gear much in that game. You CAN, sure, but it's hardly the real focus of any kind of character advancement. But if you do take the time to get yourself a magic item of some kind, it's usually something that is always going to be useful. And it's usually a Big Deal to have them, as they are not just something equivalent to a +1 Magic Sword, versus a +2 Magic Sword. They are often given the gravitas and narrative weight of the Hobbits finding the named magic weapons they had in LOTR. How they hang onto them for the entire story, and they are just as powerful at the end, as at the beginning. Whether it be against an orc grunt, or a Nazgul.

I mean they are considered powerful enough that if you want to start a character already having one, you have to invest character starting traits into a stat just to allow you to have it, which means you can't use those trait points on other, powerful things. That's the kind of stuff I like regarding gear. Personally I'd rather not bother with it at all, and focus entirely on character growth/advancement as the measure of power. But it's also because I find the ever-present drive to find more powerful loot, a detraction from the story.

I remember playing a Paladin of the Raven Queen (I think that was her name? The Goddess of Death in the 4E D&D system. The Neutral Death god), and I made his backstory be that his temple was raided by some necromancers, and most of them were killed, except for himself, and like 4 of his friends. Well, technically they were killed too, but in a snub to the Raven Queen (who hates the undead), they were resurrected as Revenants and forced to serve the necromancer who attacked our temple. So I had my Paladin's personal goal be to track down his old friends, and put them down, so they could find rest. So my guy and his party of living allies are just tooling around doing some missions from the GM, basic starter stuff, the usual. But we end up in a crypt/tomb, and without missing a beat, the guy playing the rogue (because of course) pipes up "I start looting all the crypts!" And I'm like -_- "please don't" "...why?" *standing there is heavy armor emblazoned with the marking of the goddess of death* ".....would you PLEASE refrain from desecrating the dead in the presence of a paladin of the god of death?!" Which just seemed to baffle him to no end. As his brain was like "yeah but....loot!" And I'm just facepalming IRL.

 

[Kae]

Um...yes? I...yes I am aware that there is playing in roleplaying? I'm....I'm not really sure what you are trying to express with that statement?

I was being pedantic, I meant no offence, pointing it out was meant to be a goof.

As to you comments about gear in systems, yeah I consider myself fairly "crunch allergic". I just really don't enjoy bothering with the mechanics of the stuff, especially when it's mostly just adding bigger numbers to things, to make more challenge. I mean I make a character, who has a staff, and it's instrumental to their backstory. There is an entire lore about the staff, and it's personal meaning to them. But....I have to never use it again past like level 3 maybe, because it's numbers just aren't big enough to match the threats I am facing.

But if this was a book or film, that staff would be a key item for the protagonist.

Which is one reason I enjoyed the World of Darkness system so much. For one, gear just doesn't increase much. A pistol is a pistol, and it's just as powerful now as when you first started the game. But it's also that they don't really focus on gear much in that game. You CAN, sure, but it's hardly the real focus of any kind of character advancement. But if you do take the time to get yourself a magic item of some kind, it's usually something that is always going to be useful. And it's usually a Big Deal to have them, as they are not just something equivalent to a +1 Magic Sword, versus a +2 Magic Sword. They are often given the gravitas and narrative weight of the Hobbits finding the named magic weapons they had in LOTR. How they hang onto them for the entire story, and they are just as powerful at the end, as at the beginning. Whether it be against an orc grunt, or a Nazgul.

I mean they are considered powerful enough that if you want to start a character already having one, you have to invest character starting traits into a stat just to allow you to have it, which means you can't use those trait points on other, powerful things. That's the kind of stuff I like regarding gear. Personally I'd rather not bother with it at all, and focus entirely on character growth/advancement as the measure of power. But it's also because I find the ever-present drive to find more powerful loot, a detraction from the story.

Not much I can say there other than I agree, I've seen some GMs get around the issue by giving you a sword that levels up with you, but I personally don't see that as a solution when you're still getting magic weapons that you're basically just going to sell because what you already have is better, the other thing is that when GMs do this, perhaps because they don't want you to trade your weapon for any other one they tend to make it really over-powered and I personally don't enjoy playing that kind of character, like a my fighter was already cheesy by making 3 attacks at level 5 & you're telling me that I also have a +3 to damage & 2 d8 damage in addition to the regular calculation on every attack? Do they not realise that most monsters won't survive a single turn?
It makes combat really boring in my opinion.

In any case while I've never played WoD I've played other games that handle loot in a similar manner and again I'll just agree with you & say that both as a GM & as a player I've found it to be a better experience.

I remember playing a Paladin of the Raven Queen (I think that was her name? The Goddess of Death in the 4E D&D system. The Neutral Death god), and I made his backstory be that his temple was raided by some necromancers, and most of them were killed, except for himself, and like 4 of his friends. Well, technically they were killed too, but in a snub to the Raven Queen (who hates the undead), they were resurrected as Revenants and forced to serve the necromancer who attacked our temple. So I had my Paladin's personal goal be to track down his old friends, and put them down, so they could find rest. So my guy and his party of living allies are just tooling around doing some missions from the GM, basic starter stuff, the usual. But we end up in a crypt/tomb, and without missing a beat, the guy playing the rogue (because of course) pipes up "I start looting all the crypts!" And I'm like -_- "please don't" "...why?" *standing there is heavy armor emblazoned with the marking of the goddess of death* ".....would you PLEASE refrain from desecrating the dead in the presence of a paladin of the god of death?!" Which just seemed to baffle him to no end. As his brain was like "yeah but....loot!" And I'm just facepalming IRL.

Yes, her name is the Raven Queen, regarding the other thing, it really can take you out of the moment when the other characters aren't acting like people all, like yes the Rogue is going to loot the tombs but only because he's assuming that because they are there they have to have loot, rather than have an in-character reason, for example "this is the tomb of a famous warrior that supposedly had a legendary sword & was buried with it" or "It is rumoured that the old king was buried along with his treasure", or anything simple, but you wouldn't really loot every single tomb even if you were specifically a tomb raider.
As someone who plays a lot of Rogues I always think of stuff like that, why would I loot that specific tomb? Especially when it's D&D and it's well known that many tombs are cursed and many other tombs contain undead horrors.

 

[Tireseas]

D&D 3.5e Fighter, duel wielding sword lesbian name Pearl.

And, because I save literally everything, I even have her character backstory (yes, the writing is amateur fanfic-grade terrible):

Spoiler: Pearls Troperiffic backstory

[note: the setting is Dragonlance, so the gods have disappeared following a cataclysm]

Exile would have been preferable. At least with exile you get to do what you want.

No, this was much worse.



Pearl didn't know who her mother was. Nor did anyone else. The person who could have known would have been King Heres, who supposedly found her in the woods abandoned.

It certainly wasn't him. She grew too fast even for a half-elf and no one had heard of a black-haired elf giving birth to a red-haired anything, especially not one with green eyes. Certainly it wasn't anyone else in the small hidden city of Na'fellen where King Heres ruled. Hard to have human children without humans.

Here she was: a lone human child in a small, unaging kingdom of elves. Here's took her in and raised her alongside her own daughter, Phiffle, who was barely of age at 95 when she first saw Pearl. In only a decade and a half, they would look practically the same age. That was almost the only thing they had in common.

While Phiffle was frail and graceful, Pearl was strong and forceful, abundant with energy as if she was trying to catch up with her sister. Phiffle walked through the gardens and woods. Pearl would trace the route by jumping from limb to limb trying to avoid touching the ground. Phiffle painted and studied. Pearl played with wooden swords she made herself, besting all the "younger" elves in play fights.

Heres saw potential in the craft of her wood and introduced her to weaponmasters thinking he could direct her sometimes destructive tendencies to a constructive purpose. There, she learned the art of forging, turning raw hunks of metal into elegant elven steel. She saw herself in the swords: raw material plucked from obscurity, fashioned into something truly elven. After the masters would finish for the evening and she cleaned up, she would spend hours training on how to use the blades she was learning to forge. When Heres noticed she was regularly skipping meals, he came upon her training and sent her to the rangers to sharpen her body and mind as she had learned to sharpen their steel.

She made a terrible ranger. She was at best okay at archery, enough to man the wall in a siege but not to scout or hunt. She had no talent for tracking or handling an animal partner. She had the subtlety of a hammer. But she did excel at one thing: swordsmanship. There, she practically learned to dance, albeit with her own brutish efficiency that came from her strength. The rangers respected her combat skills, especially with two swords, but often joked that she was the one you sent in when precision and tact were less necessary. She didn't mind this. As she began going out on assignments with them, she would be the one that charged straight on while the others flanked beside. It wasn't long before she would lead the parties in slaying spiders, corrupted beasts, even the occasional orc encampment that got to close to the tiny hidden kingdom.

Time passed quickly for her. At 20, she was made the official champion of Heres, and would travel with him on diplomatic missions as part of his guard, often participating in local duels put on by the kingdoms during festivals. She relished the spotlight. The armormasters gave her a custom set of elven breastplate armor, with dark crimson highlights in stark contrast to the blues and greens that usually stain elven armor. She fashioned a pair of twin elven scimitars, and Heres authorized the rare use of magics to enhance them. Although as champion she was technically a bodyguard to the royal family, other guards protected the King and Queen while she dispatched any attackers, often going deep into the woods and hideouts of those foolish enough to try and attack the royal family.

As Heres nurtured her, his wife, Queen Ji'na treated her more like the unwanted family pet. She disliked the attention Pearl was given, thinking it was at the expense of her blood daughter Phiffle. She had hoped with Pearl's activities with the forges or rangers that it would keep her away from the family and Phiffle's studies. It didn't.

As Pearl grew and matured into a fine soldier, Ji'na's dislike turned into jealousy. She hated any time that Pearl and Heres were together. She worried that he would be seduced by Pearl and her refined brutality. She worried that he would name Pearl as his heir to the throne despite the likelihood she would die of old age long before he would age a day. Every mission that she came back to embrace her adopted father grew Ji'na's jealousy. Every time they were alone grew Ji'na's suspicions.

The truth was, however, that Pearl had no interest in the throne or the court. Indeed, her only interest was Phiffle. Many of the nights Ji'na suspected a rendezvous with her husband, Pearl was actually spending with Phiffle, talking about a future where Pearl would guard her as queen, laughing under the stars together as if she was her prince in shining red armor.

Heres often meditated alone in his chambers these nights thinking on the state of the world and his kingdom, with orders to not be disturbed.

It was one of these nights he never came out.

Phiffle found him, next to a bottle of concentrated giant centipede venom. On his personal desk was a letter lamenting three and a half centuries abandoned by the gods. He was wise and good, waiting for the day the gods would return and divine magic would flourish. His wait turned into quiet anguish, which decayed into despair. His meditations were ruminations on the slow, steady rise of the darkness that came from the absence of the gods. Eventually, he could take no more of the burdens of putting on a calm face as he saw the coming darkness and took his life. 500 years of rule ending in a single night.

The formal mourning of the king was months long. Queen Ji'na took his place as the ruler. In spite of her jealousy, she was a fine leader, even in grief. Phiffle and Pearl comforted each other in their grief, as two women who had each lost a father. They loved each other, and there was nothing that could break that bond.

At the end of six months, Ji'na gathered the court together. She blamed the death of the king on those who angered the gods and ushered in his despair. To wit, she had Pearl brought to the court. There she lavished praise on Pearl, (whether sincere or not Pearl could not tell) and charged her with bringing back the gods, taking any gear and persons needed to complete her task. She was bound by oath to accept the mission. It broke her that she would likely be leaving the kingdom forever, likely to never see Phiffle again. How does one move the gods when far greater have tried?

She refused to bring any rangers or allies on her quest. Na'fellen would need every arm and soldier to protect her if what the king saw was true, at least that's what Pearl said to them. The reality is that she could not bear it if Phiffle was harmed in her absence, and the death of a royal always runs the risk of kingdoms being taken over while they are in grief. The queen and guard knew how to protect the kingdom. Pearl would not take needed men from that paramount objective. Pearl would go alone on this Sisyphean task.

And so here she is, a soldier and swordsmith, bitter and broken by grief and heartbreak from the death of her adoptive father and forced separation from her lover, sent on a quest that will almost certainly see her die before the task is complete.

Yeah, exile would have been better…

[Not my longest backstory (that one stretched 11 pages for a Cleric of Nerul), but probably my most favorite character that I actually got some real play in]

The Campaign itself took place almost a decade later with a now-established group of adventurers coming across a Minotaur who appears to be the first cleric since the gods left. We lasted 4 or 5 sessions before scheduling preventing us from continuing, though I still regard this as an active campaign.

 

[Zykon TheLich]

I'm going for 2.

First RPG character, sometime in the eaerly to mid 90's:
Cyberpunk 2020 solo, Leonard Tilburn, ex parachute regiment. I can't remember any specific adventures but we played though a few of the pre written adventures and generally got involed in a lot of thoroughly amoral mercenary assholery. Had the fairly standard killing machine starter pack of cyberware, guns, armour, skills and stats. Probably wouldn't enjoy playing a charcater like this now, but it was fun at the time.

Last RPG character that actually went anywhere, sometime in the late 2000's
WHFRPV2 charcoal burner Klara Schwarzlunge. I wrote about 3 A4 sides of backstory, character details etc. I can still remember the major points.
Rhya worshipper. Lived in the tiny village of Beilen in the Demst Valley on the outskirts of the Laurelorn forest in Nordland. Father and Brother got conscripted into the Hargendorf regiment during the Storm of Chaos and went off to get caught up in the Seige of Middeheim. A couple of mangled remnants returned to Beilen and reported that they had seen her father just about alive in a field hospital somewhere in the city and brother was nowhere to be seen.
So Klara hoists her axe and goes off to try and find them. Makes it to Middenheim with a small group of travellers that glommed together (PC group formation, obviously) and during the course of PC adventuring in the city tracks down her horribly crippled father and makes enough cash to send him on a wagon back home. The hideous devastation and human misery of the place and horrors of adventuring gets her drinking and taking various warhammer drugs ported over from V1 (i.e. gained 6 insanity points, failed her WP test and and rolled Mandrake Man). Finds out her brother went off with an ad hoc group of soldiers to go somewhere and do something I can't recall which just happened to be near the next place the party was meant to be going. Then the game petered out due to scheduling on the way there.

*sniffle* I'm getting a little nostalgic tear now.

 

[Palindromemordnilap]

Honestly the most fun I've had was with my tempest cleric in 5e, who was a bombastic pirate following some kind of primordial shark deity. His general goal was to go around doing badass things because showing off how badass you are thanks to your god is a great way of getting people to follow that god too hoping it'll make them badass as well. Favourite moment so far was getting the finishing blow on a hydra (sort of) by using a trait that let him automatically max his damage on certain attacks and just straight up exploding three heads with a sonic blast